On his deathbed in 1820 Queen Victoria's father, the Duke of Kent, left his widow and baby daughter in the care of his dashing aide-de-camp Captain John Conroy. A decade later Sir John Conroy, as he then was, appeared as a knight in shining armour, totally in control of the Duchess of Kent's household and of Victoria. How was it then that only five short years later the Heiress Presumptive had brought about his downfall? Historians have long been baffled by the power wielded by this shrewd and opportunistic organizer, who was later assumed to be an embezzler and a sham. Using unpublished material from the Conroy papers in Balliol College, Oxford, and from the Royal Archives, Katherine Hudson reveals with humour and irony the secret delusion on which Sir John's dominance was based.